Author: Drew Neisser

The word spread of Anna Nicole’s death faster than a firebomb. It was if someone really important, like a president, had died. My office mates huddled around screens searching for clues to the cause, many suspecting suicide given the recent death of her son. Chatter about her weight fluctuations, her marriage to the old tycoon, her soft porn shows, floated above the cubes. Some remembered her Guess jean ads and even her Playboy spreads. The evening news lead with her story as if this was indeed the biggest story of the day. Meanwhile, I crafted my own Post-like headline “Ditzy Diva Dies” with the sub-head “Why do we care?”

Anna Nicole was a brand. An amazingly non-PC brand in an increasingly PC-world. Anna was flamboyant, living by the creed “if you’ve got it, flaunt it” and flaunt it she did. After stripping for Playboy, she moved into revealing territory as a model for wannabe naughty Guess jeans. She wasn’t the prettiest model. She was simply big. Big boobs. Big personality. Big ditz. Big. She didn’t just marry a rich guy, she married an incredibly rich, incredibly old guy who was practically near death when she carried him to the alter. And that was big news. Then her husband died and his family sued. That was big news too though it wasn’t a big surprise. That came when the Supreme Court (man I would have paid money to be in the Supreme Court when she strolled in and chatted up the big judges) agreed to hear her case and then agreed that it should be re-opened. Anne Nicole, the brand, continued to live a “big” life, jumping from tabloid headline to tabloid headline. It was like watching train tracks knowing that there would be a wreck, a huge multi-car, get out the big typeface, call the National Guard, train wreck.

Yet we watched, waiting for each train wreck, forgiving any transgressions, practically reveling in her mis-adventures. Anna Nicole was a fantasy, no doubt offensive to some and inspiring to others. She didn’t seem to care what people thought of her as long as they thought of her. As a brand, she seemed to made of Teflon. Nothing bad really stuck. It simply fell off her like a terry cloth robe. And once naked she could emerge yet again ready to inspire another tabloid.

So, why does MFG care about Anna Nicole? Anna was a celebrated free spirit. She kept us engaged by living a big, outrageous ditzy life. Had we forced a must-be-PC attitude upon Nicole, no one, and certainly not the media, would have cared a hoot about her hooters. Anna Nicole cut through by being different, by being outrageous, by not being afraid of offending someone with different values than hers. Shouldn’t brands be afforded some of this freedom? Goodbye Anna Nicole, we miss you already.

Can a marketer really succeed by not offending anyone? Snickers pulled its two-guys-kissing ad because gay activists complained. GM is under fire for an ad that shows a robot contemplating suicide in a dream sequence. Frankly, I’m surprised no one has complained at the Bud Light spot which shows people slapping each other instead of pounding fists. Doesn’t that spot encourage violence in era when California legislators are contemplating a bill than makes spanking a kid a crime? Shouldn’t Burger King be under pressure from DUMB (Don’t Understand Masked Behavior) activists? Where does this stop?

For marketing to cut through, it must combine elements of surprise, emotion and relevance. Surprise general means doing something against the norm. Touching an emotional chord requires expressing a feeling that may not be appropriate for every social group. Being relevant to your target requires focus and messaging that could go right over the heads of other consumers.

Let’s look at Burger King for the moment. Crispin turned The King into an icon 3 years ago. Many thought he was creepy. Jay Leno thought he was hysterical and had him on his show multiple times and created a fantasy video where The King ends up pinching his wife. Other folks created pictures of The King in bed with everyone from Paris Hilton to Saddam Hussein. Clearly, these images would offend somebody. Recent ads featuring a father-burger giving his son-burger advice were ripe with sexual innuendo. Surely teetotalers in Toledo must have been offended about these too. Did BK care? Not in the least. In fact, their CMO’s freely admits to favoring the “provocative over the pleasant.” Why? Because as reported by USA Today:

Burger King is laser-focused on its key customer: the ‘superfan. That’s BK’s term for th mostly 18 to 35-year old males who gobble fast food at the devil-may-care clip of nine to 16 times a moth. While they’re just 18% of Burger King’s customers, they account for about half of all visits to the stores.

Has this un-PC, laser-focused marketing approach worked for BK? You bet! Sales are up for the 11th consecutive quarter. Creating highly entertaining marketing that has special appeal to one target group is not just a good idea it is about the only way to succeed in our highly fragmented media world. Marketing for Good does not suggest purposely offending anyone but for heaven’s sake one man’s perfect pitch is another man’s strike out. To appeal to all is appeal to none. To be melodramatic for a moment, the shackles of political correctness could maim if not mortally wound this industry. Rant over.

Marketing, first and foremost, should do good for the brand. And by good, I mean, sell product. A well-meaning socially responsible campaign that doesn’t sell product is no good. The folks responsible for said well-meaning campaign will either lose their jobs or be pushed aside by marketing managers who can correlate their efforts to positive sales results. That said, if we only look at marketing through our “results glasses” then we end up with bomb scares in Boston.

Let’s revisit the Boston bomber incident from a results only perspective. As Seth and Naomi pointed out on this blog a couple of days ago:

What they successfully did was reach a very broad audience. How many other ad campaigns create this much coverage? Everyone in America knows there is a new cartoon on the Cartoon Network…and most of us didn’t even know a Cartoon Network existed until yesterday.

Yes indeed, the $2.0 million Time Warner ended up paying to assuage Boston was a bargain relative to the media value created by this stunt. Aqua Teen Hunger Force became a household name overnight. Even the tactic, however odious, reinforced the subversive credentials of Adult Swim and its ‘man boy’ target. On this basis, this stunt did good for the brand. BUT the other part of Marketing for Good is the recognition that marketing needs to do good for the brand AND the world we share. To only do good for the brand takes a myopic, short-term perspective that will inevitably come back to bite the brand or parent company (in the case of Time Warner) in the proverbial tuchis.

So where does one start, selling or saving the world? Snickers focused on selling when it created its meant-to-be comical Super Bowl commercial that showed two men accidentally kissing. Next thing you know, gay organizations are protesting noting that the ad was “offensive to gays.” USA Today treated the Snickers story as headline news today as Masterfoods’ announced that they were pulling the plug on the commercial. Since they had planned a whole online extension of this campaign with alternate endings, this couldn’t have been an easy decision. Frankly, I think this is a tempest in a teapot and as one gay activist noted in USA Today not everyone was offended by this spot:

Cyd Zeigler, co-founder of Outsports.com, a website for gay sports enthusiasts, says he saw it at a Super Bowl party with 30 gay friends — and no one had a problem with it. “I simply wasn’t offended by it,” Zeigler says. “I just don’t see how a couple of mechanics pulling out chest hair because they kissed is offensive.”

Marketing for Good does not embrace only doing “safe” ads that offend no one. Frankly, if you offend no one, you often appeal to no one. Burger King saved its business by not playing it safe. More on that tomorrow.

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Whether or not you liked GM’s “Robot” commercial (see yesterday’s post), you’ve got to like FIRST and its student robotics competitions. I hadn’t heard of FIRST until recently when a friend and fund-raiser gave me the run down. The FIRST website, usfirst.com, provides a concise summary:

FIRST was founded in 1989 to inspire young people’s interest and participation in science and technology. Based in Manchester, NH, the 501 (c) (3) not-for-profit public charity designs accessible, innovative programs that motivate young people to pursue education and career opportunities in science, technology, engineering, and math, while building self-confidence, knowledge, and life skills.

Founded by Dean Kamen, the genius inventor behind Segue, FIRST hosts a number of robotic competitions for kids including Junior FIRST Lego (kids 6-9), First Lego (10-14), FIRST Vex Challenge (high school) and FIRST Robotics Competition (high school). Each program challenges kids to build robots as a team with the level of complexity accelerating with age. Volunteer engineers work with the kids to create robots that can complete complex tasks (which does not include destroying other robots.)

The largest of these is the FIRST Robotics Competition which has several regional competitions followed by a huge national finals at the Georgia Dome in Atlanta. On the FIRST website they describe this as the “varsity sport for the mind” which to me is a wonderfully evocative position. Not that I have anything against high school football but consider for amount how much civic money and energy goes into celebrating academically-challenged Neanderthals bashing each others brains out. Imagine for a moment the same kind of money and energy going into something that celebrates brain-power over brawn.

Here’s how it would happen in Dream Town, USA. On Wednesday, the Dream Town cheerleaders, made up of the top English students would lead a FIRST pep rally in the gym. Everyone on campus would show up to support the FIRST teams who were now BMOC/BWOC’s and the heart-throbs of many. On Thursday, FIRST boosters would host an alumni dinner raising record amounts of cash to create the best robotics “gym” in the country. Giant Corp, a huge local company, would offer a challenge grant that would ensure FIRST’s funding for the next 10 years. The female CTO (the youngest in the history of Giant Corp) would make a speech noting with tears in her eyes that FIRST gave her the idea that maybe she could pursue a career in math and science. On Friday, the JV and Varsity FIRST teams would host an exhibition match which would also double as a recruiting effort for next year’s team. The Principal of the school announces that the FIRST coach was now making more than the football coach and everyone cheered. Over the weekend, the Dream Town FIRST team would travel to a regional competition where they would face off against the best and the brightest in their area. On Monday, the Dream Town Gazette would run a story on the cover of the sports page about the weekend competition eclipsing coverage of the Super Bowl.

Robots over-taking football? Geeks becoming BMOC’s? Yeah, right! As Dean Kamen says, “we are what we celebrate” and it seems to me celebrating invention is a brilliant idea whose time has come and frankly our global competitiveness depends on it. So GM, I appeal to you again and suggest you become a lead sponsor of FIRST and get your cute little yellow Robot to all the regional competitions. Other companies with a strong emphasis on technology and engineering, encourage your employees to get involved or at minimum underwrite some of the events. FIRST could and should be a “varsity sport for the mind” enjoying all the social and financial support of other athletic endeavors.

Watching the Super Bowl ads was the priority in our house. Even my son hit the rewind button when the K-Fed spot slipped by him. Yes, we watched the game but not once did we feel the need to go back even when a call was close. Of course, these weren’t our teams. Our teams were the ad folks behind the scenes and we were routing for big laughs. To say we were disappointed is an understatement. Many of the ads were so mean spirited the joke seemed to be on the CMO’s who threw away their millions. The Career Builder spots were among the worst, in my opinion, with the low point being disgruntled workers throwing themselves off cliffs. Perhaps the creators were too young to remember the infamous Apple “Lemmings” spot that bombed big time in the 1985 Super Bowl. So for all you aspiring commercial makers out there, repeat after me, people throwing themselves off cliffs just isn’t funny.
I thought the Robert Goulet ad for Emerald Nuts provided an unexpected chuckle. Even though many in the audience wouldn’t know who he was, all got the idea that this famous old guy was doing something ridiculous. The K-Fed spot for Nationwide was also ridiculously funny. The dream conceit was quite similar to our favorite spot.
Call us suckers but the Chevy “Robot” spot (see it on YouTube) was the big winner in our house. We watched it three times. We were totally charmed by the clumsy robot who gets fired from the Chevy factory floor and after a few pitiful jobs ends up throwing itself into the river. The story telling was clever and well paced and the ending, while not a belly laugh, was quite charming. Here’s the irony–a story about a robot had more humanity than nearly all the spots featuring people. What’s up with that?

According to John Neff on Autoblog:

It’s funny, but a little strange, too. Not that the ad agency intended this, but it feels like you’re watching a union member who just lost his job.

Not everyone agrees with our assessment of Robot. Richard Kirshenbaum of Kirshenbaum and Bond gave the spot one star in today’s New York Post saying “It was creep, weird, stupid and scary. It was the biggest lose of the Super Bowl.” Of course, everyone is entitled to his/her opinion but Richard, you are wrong about this one! Stuart Elliott in his column in the New York Times wrote:

The best of the batch was a commercial for General Motors by Deutsch, in which a factory robot “obsessed with quality” imagined the dire outcome of making a mistake.

So, who you going to listen to, the Times or the Post? If I were working with GM, I’d be figuring out how to get that Robot out to his awaiting public. That Robot could be the next King (as in Burger). Get him on Letterman (with or without Oprah–that was a very very funny inside joke). Get that Robot on street corners, have it ring the bell at the NYSE and make sure it shows up at the regional and national FIRST robotic competitions (think varsity sport for the mind). That kid should be a star!

Someone said “everything is funny unless it happens to you”. Laughter abounded yesterday as people learned more about the Boston Lite Brite Bomb incident. Some were laughing at Boston for over-reacting. Turns out the little electronic critters had been up for three weeks before someone notified the police. One theory is that the guerrilla marketing agency, Interference, actually made the call to the police to get the publicity sunami started. Anyway, the Boston police weren’t laughing and spent the day trying to figure out how much this should cost Cartoon Network and its agency. By the end of day, they made it clear that the price of indignity was a cool 750,000 smackers as noted in Promo Xtra:

Meanwhile, the Massachusetts Attorney General is investigating Turner, and Boston officials are seeking restitution for at least $750,000 for the fees that the city incurred responding to what it believed was a terrorist threat. Turner CEO Phil Kent is talking with city officials about the restitution, and other issues, Powell said.

Others were laughing at the agency for not notifying the police in advance. The comedy cascaded to the truly ridiculous with the press conference carried by Fox News featuring the arrested street team dudes talking about their hair!

And given all the hub bub, bidding was up to $1200 for one of the Lite Brite bombs on eBay. Who wouldn’t want one of these infamous little bad boys of guerrilla marketing?

ABC News ran a feature on this story on Nightline last night which you can watch on their website today. If you don’t get there today, the video is called “Nightline Online: Guerrilla Ads Gone Wrong.” You might recognize one of the “experts” being interviewed.

Lots of blogs added their two cents worth. Love David Morgan’s headline on his MediaPost blog, “Let’s Stop Being Dumb”. Here’s the intro to his piece which sums up part of the story quite nicely:

By now, most of you probably know that most of Boston was locked down yesterday in traffic jams and mass transit delays because of a guerilla marketing campaign gone bad.

Black boxes with electronics were placed in heavily trafficked public places in a number of large U.S. cities. These devices were there to project LED images on public walls, bridges, abutments and the like. The projection of these images in public places was intended, I suspect, to create lots of cool buzz among the public about a new media launch. At this point, it appears that permits were not obtained to place these devices in Boston, nor was the Boston police department notified of their existence.

This was really, really dumb.

So how does this end? Boston-haters certainly have another quiver in their bow. Cartoon Network will probably have to find a new guerrilla agency assuming Time-Warner even lets them use the word “guerrilla” ever again. Other big companies are going to be more cautious with their guerrilla activities. Interference will go silent for a bit and then re-emerge stronger than ever having executed the most infamous of guerrilla campaigns to-date. Those of us that think marketing at worst should “do no harm” and at best, make life a little better, are slightly emboldened, knowing that the alternative is really not a joke.